STATISTICAL SOFTWARE PUTS ES IN EASE OF USE

GROUND-breaking analysis with statistical software has shown that
women are more susceptible to the effects of the rave drug, ecstasy,
than men, Gavin Hadland writes.

The drugs charity Release used equipment from analytical software
company SPSS to gather data from 520 people at raves in the southeast
of England.

Using statistical software never before applied to this kind of data,
the charity was able to perform detailed trend analysis of drug use at
nightclubs.

"We were able to focus on specific aspects of drug-using behaviour
that hadn't previously been tackled," said Mike Goodman, the director
of Release. "The discovery that women are more susceptible to drugs is
intriguing - an example of the detailed way in which we were able to
examine the relationship between drug use and lifestyle."

Respondents were asked to tick a list of positive and negative effects
experienced with ecstasy use. The positive list included feelings such
as happiness, confidence and sexual excitement, while the negative
list featured a range of symptoms such as nausea, blurred vision and
mood swings.

The survey found that drug use at dance events was widespread, with 97
per cent of respondents having tried an illegal drug. Sixty-eight
per cent named ecstasy as their drug of choice.

Easy-to-use statistical analysis is proving increasingly useful to
people who are not professional statisticians or analysts but conduct
in-depth research in complex subjects.

"Its number-crun-ching powers eliminate human error and are better at
forecasting degrees of variance," says Berni Simmons of Woking-based
SPSS. The software has highly technical capability but has been put
into a Windows environment that is familiar to many people and thus
makes the software easier to use, he adds.

"One of the main advantages of the software is that it saves time,"
Simmons says. "Research into recreational drug-taking would otherwise
have been very time-consuming if done without software, and it is
unlikely the analysis would ever have been carried out."

The software has also been used in a study of child mortality in
industrial areas in the North East and another into hospital patient
survival rates based on different treatments.

Often the software produces results that are expected. One study on
behalf of a motor insurer, for instance, showed that the most likely
lapser on a policy is a male aged under 25 owning a car with GT, or a
16-valve badge. Other results are less predictable.

Research into fraudulent use of credit cards showed that a high number
of users were lorry drivers filling their vehicles with fuel just
before crossing an international border.